BASTIAN, ADOLF (1826-1905), German ethnologist. Educated as a physician, he early devoted himself to travel. From 1861 he travelled in the Far East for five years. Upon his return he commenced the publication of his great work on The Peoples of Eastern Asia, an immense storehouse of facts owing little to arrangement or style. He was later made pro fessor of ethnology at the university of Berlin and keeper of the ethnological museum. He was president of the Berlin Anthropo logical Society and part founder of the German Africa Society of Berlin.
Later he undertook further scientific travels in Africa, South America and India, and the results of these explorations were published in a long series of separate papers comprising several on Buddhism and on the psychological problems presented by native superstitions. Bastian also edited the Zeitschri f t f iir Ethnologie from 1869, in conjunction with Virchow and Robert von Hartmann.